Aftereffects
by Punzie the Platypus
Summary: Aunt Cass, panic-stricken, calls for her boys after the fire causes the school's exhibition hall to collapse; her eldest nephew's friends are on the worried look-out, but it's she who finds a blacked-out, severely scarred Hiro; in the hospital room, she's the one who has to break the news of his permanent facial scars to him, but he has to reveal Tadashi's horrible fate to her.


_**Soli Deo gloria**_

 **DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Big Hero 6.  
**

 **So, I kinda find it hard to believe that Hiro didn't experience _some_ kind of physical injury as a result of being thrown back from the fire. Hence, this fanfic:**

The kid's thrown back by sheer energy. The exhibition hall's floors fall in, sending a wave of force and fire in an outgoing circle from it. And Hiro loses sight of his brother in the flames just as the building drops in on itself, and rolls out onto the stairs and sidewalk surrounding it.

Hiro falls on his back, on the cement. Debris flies from the building, shrapnel burnt and sizzling and powerfully sent, like bullets. The hot air, past the point of burning, catches his skin and doesn't let it go, eating away at it like acid. Hiro's head bleeds from falling and his last conscious thought before his body is too full of pain to keep up is _Tadashi, come back! COME BACK! Tadashi . . ._ no.

* * *

"Tadashi! Hiro! HIRRRRRRROOOOOO!" Aunt Cass feels her throat ripping hoarse, but she doesn't care. Arms pulled down at her sides, on the balls of her feet, she screams. Her kids, her kids—she needs to find _her kids_.

The screaming had caused Aunt Cass to turn from the driver's door, keys in hand. Fred stopped making funny hand gestures; Wasabi stopped trying to calm him down; Gogo stopped blowing bubbles and raising eyebrows; Honey stopped gushing; everyone just _stopped_ but that huge bonfire, that incessant _screaming_ —and the sound of the building falling down.

Five minutes later, every second counts. Gogo and Fred are running around, knocking around strangers, looking for the brothers. Wasabi and Honey flag down authority figures, who try to patiently explain that they have to _step back_ while they put yellow tape up. The air is thick and hot, smoggy, with little flat pieces of dead building floating gently down like falling leaves to sprinkle the sidewalks.

And Aunt Cass hyperventilates, covers her mouth with her hand, tries not to breathe in the hot smoke fumes. She _can't_ let Hiro and Tadashi die—oh, _where are they_?!—she needs to find her sweet boys, her good student and her rebellious genius, who make her stress-eat and yell when she doesn't want to, and doubt herself, and make her life _full_.

She feels like she's failing when she stands there alone, a building being put out by a team of firefighters to her left, and her nephew's worried friends rushing to her right. What can she do?

Cass sucks in a breath, says, "Find them; just _find_ them," and calls through tunneled hands, "TADASHIIIIIIIIII! HIRRRROOOOO!"

Somehow, though it's lower than a whisper, Aunt Cass hears the grimace and low mutter of "Aunt Cass?" She gasps, eyes and ears alert, and spots a tuft of black hair and a red shirt. "HIRO!" she screams. She runs and breaks through the knees of her pants as she slides next to him. She hurries to rest his head on her lap and raise his eyes to face her. Tears are quick and present but she ignores them as she says, "Hiro, stay with me!" She barely notices how the burning debris deforms his skin; all she can see is her poor, hurt boy.

* * *

The waiting room, white, clinical, and past two in the morning, contains four slouched figures: all worried, anxious, and alarmed. Honey's been weeping for the past hour; Wasabi is a patient giver of tissues, for which she thanks him kindly and profusely. Fred, wide-eyed and struck with such reality, sits slouched. Gogo can barely find a word to say. What is there to say? Ambulances had blared into existence at the hall and they'd gathered in a stricken group to see Hiro loaded in a stretcher onto one. Aunt Cass, after finally letting her lingering fingers let his hand go, launched herself at them and explained in broken sentences that would they _please_ wait a little longer here, for news of Tadashi?

They had. For fours hours they'd stepped past lines, pretty much assaulted officers, almost snuck into the burned building, and were almost expelled for lack of discretion and for saying to hell with the rules. But finally a kindly fatherly officer had patted their shoulders and told them to go home, report to the police station for any news the next morning, but _please_ get some sleep.

They hadn't gotten any. They didn't even go home. But they left.

They'd surprised an ER night shift nurse when they'd come running in, demanding to see Hiro Hamada. "You _have_ to let us see him!" Wasabi said. "And we're not leaving until we do," Gogo had said firmly, arms folded and a murderous look on her face.

But they got good seats. In a white, clinical waiting room.

Now the mute TV above plays news of the fire; all ignore it. Except Gogo. She follows the closed captioning for the mention of Tadashi's name.

"Professor Callaghan is believed to have been trapped in the building when it collapsed. . ."

"Callaghan's gone," Gogo breathes.

Honey cries harder, though silently.

It's all silence and realization and disbelief and horror until Wasabi stands, says softly, acknowledging "Aunt Cass." Honey calms down and stands with pink eyes, and Fred hurries in slow-motion to his feet.

Aunt Cass puts a hand on Wasabi's broad shoulder for support. "Hiro . . . he'll be okay."

"No long-lasting injuries, such as blindness or deafness?" Honey sniffs into a hankie but her voice is even, even curious.

Aunt Cass hesitates to answer, but finally summons courage and breath enough to say, "He's going to get some killer scarring out of this. He'd also hit his head on the sidewalk, but he won't get any bad injury out of it. Now, did any of you find Tadashi?"

Heads shake around the circle; Wasabi explains the police officer. "We'll be there at dawn," he says.

"You kids need to sleep; I'll go." Aunt Cass sighs and turns back, yearning to go back to her nephew's hospital room. "But someone has to stay with Hiro . . . he can't be alone."

"We'll stay with him," Gogo tells her.

"And we'll call you the moment he wakes up," Wasabi confirms.

"We'll never leave the little dude's side," Fred says kindly.

"He'll be okay with us," Honey says, patting Aunt Cass's hand and smiling wryly, as there are tears in her eyes.

Aunt Cass chokes up and hugs them all like they're her nieces and nephews too.

* * *

The hospital policy is guardian relatives only outside of normal visiting hours. So Aunt Cass snores in the armchair at Hiro's bedside that crack of sun, letting the college kids get some meager, anxious sleep in their dorms. Her head hitches up with a snore while Hiro's heart monitor beats regularly.

He stirs, hearing first only a ringing but then his own breathing in his ears. His arms twist in the white sheets and his face—he can't _feel_ half of it. He groans and his heart monitor wakes up, alert, and he shifts and makes enough noise to wake up Aunt Cass. She's as alert as a cat and as fast to his side, grasping his hand gently, like he's glass, and whispering, "I'm here, honey."

Hiro's other hand flies to his face, to touch the thick bandaging there. When he opens his eyes, he realizes only one will. The other is shut and won't open, like a locked door—It's covered by the thick bandage.

His hand keeps roaming around his face; "The fire," he whispers.

"Do you want a mirror, honey?" Aunt Cass is bent, facing him. Her face tells him she'll do anything to make him feel better; she'll do any little thing to accommodate her poor boy.

Hiro nods and Aunt Cass holds up her compact mirror, biting her lip as she does so, pained at revealing an ugly truth.

Several red cuts are bandaged, away from the sight of the world, but Hiro knows he's seeing only part of the damage. He touches the bandage over his eye again; he hopes he can still see in that one. He'll ask Aunt Cass about it later, when he isn't reeling from one bold fact: "My face; it's . . . permanently scarred."

"Yes, probably," Aunt Cass says. She deflates and lowers the mirror, but is quick to remind him of good things: "But you can still hear, and see, and walk and talk. The doctors are _so_ optimistic about your prognosis."

Hiro can barely begin to resign himself to _this_ when he's hit with a flood of remembrance. Sitting up, he says, "Wait, Tadashi! Is he okay? Did they find him?"

Aunt Cass sighs and shakes her head. "They don't know where he is."

Hiro's voice is hollow, and he has to swallow to be able to say, "I-I know where he is."

Aunt Cass's heart thumps off-key. "Where?"

Hiro clears his throat and says, not meeting Aunt Cass's eyes, "He went back into the exhibition hall, to find Callaghan. He . . . he was going to save him. But the building collapsed. And I blacked out. . ."

Aunt Cass covers her lips with a trembling hand and bows her head, tears appearing at the corners of her eyes, which are squeezed shut. She clutches his hand like a lifeline and Hiro can't cry, can't say anything; just with his mouth a little open, he shakily breathes and looks at Aunt Cass with his heart having lost, and aching something physically painful.

* * *

Aunt Cass explains to the police in the hallway what Hiro told her; they step just into the doorway to ask him a few brief questions, but nothing further. They know he's in pain, and in grief.

Tadashi Hamada's burnt body is found under a fallen supportive wall in the southern entrance to the exhibition hall.

Hiro's scar heal over in silent days in the hospital room, with his brother's friends haunting the chairs with drawn, hollow faces and big eyes. He manages to get out an afternoon before the rainy funeral and attends it in his black suit with an umbrella especially over his face.

When the bandages finally stay off, they reveal marred, misshapen lines, jagged and scrawly, like untidy cursive, all over the left side of his face. Only the upper right eye and a bit of cheek under it remains normal, young and smooth. But the rest of his young face is so scarred that a frown causes his entire face to take on a vengeful, angry look.

They're painful reminders of that day, just as the empty bed of your older brother is one, too.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't want to seek cosmetic surgery for your facial scarring, Hiro?" Baymax asks this curiously, kindly, an afternoon after Callaghan is put away and Hiro is self-consciously examining his heavy scarring in the bathroom mirror.

Honey, Wasabi, Fred, and Gogo have all complimented him on his scars, their comments ranging from 'cool', 'character-forming', 'reminding', and 'sobering'. The scarring was all that and more.

That doesn't meant Hiro always likes the look of them, though. Sometimes he wishes he never had them. Other days he can't see himself without them.

Hiro stops pulling at his skin for a moment and meets Baymax's eyes in the mirror. "No, I don't think so, Baymax. These scars . . . they remind me of that day. And look," and he sighs, looking at the scars that have faded, lessened in pain, and softened in time, "they're healing."

 **Thanks for reading!**


End file.
